Agatha

Wife of Eadweard the Exile.

Because of the length of the discussion, the
article on Agatha has been divided into two pages. The other page
contains the Appendices.

Agatha married Eadweard "the Exile"
sometime before his return to England in 1057. She was still
living in 1067, when she accompanied her children as a refugee
into Scotland [ASC(D) s.a. 1067 (p. 201); Sim. Durh., c. 155 (2:
190)].

Date of birth: Say 1015×1035?
Place of birth: Unknown.Given the surviving evidence, the
best we can hope for is to give a range of dates in which
Agatha's birth probably occurred, based on the slim evidence that
exists for the ages of her children. Her son Eadgar Ćtheling was
said by Orderic Vitalis to have been the same age as Robert of
Normandy, son of William the Conqueror ["... ducemque
sibi coćvum ..." OV x, 11 (vol. 4, p. 70)]. Robert was
the eldest son (and probably the eldest child) of a marriage
which occurred between 1049 and 1053, and probably in 1050 or
1051 [see the page of William I], thus born probably
between 1050 and 1054, and such a birthdate would fit well for
Eadgar, whom the contemporary Guillaume de Poitiers calls a
"puer" in referring to events of 1066 ["Regem
statuerant Edgarum Athelinum, ex Edwardi Regis nobilitate annis
puerum." Guillaume de Poitiers, ii, 28 (pp. 146-7); see
also ibid., ii, 35 (pp. 162-3)], making it unlikely that Eadgar
was born before 1050. Agatha's daughter Margaret was married to
Malcolm III of Scotland, probably in about 1070 [see the page of Malcolm III for a discussion of this date]. If we assume that
Agatha and Margaret did not marry before the age of 17 and did
not have a child before the age of 18, then that would place
Agatha's birth in 1035 or before, with dates a year or two later
possible but highly improbable, and with a birth in 1030 or
before providing a more comfortable margin. In the other
direction, although it seems very unlikely that Agatha was older
than her husband (born 1016×7), the possibility that she was
born a decade earlier cannot be strictly ruled out. Jetté places
the marriage of Margaret about 1067 ("about ten years"
after 1057). This is probably a few years too early [Freeman
(1870-9), 4: 783-7; see the page of Malcolm III]. Because Malcolm
asked for the permission of Margaret's brother Eadgar to marry
her, and because "enough was known about his [Edgar's]
personality to separate him from the throne of England in
1066", Jetté argues that the eldest of Margaret's children
was born between 1045 and 1050 "at the latest" and thus
that Agatha "cannot be born after 1030 and that she was more
likely born around 1020" [Jetté (1996), 420]. However,
although Agatha may have been born that early, there seems to be
no reason to insist on it.

Date of death: After 1067.Place of
death: Unknown.As noted above, Agatha was still
living in 1067. Ingham places her death about 1068, saying that
she is thought to have been deceased before her daughter married
king Malcolm [Ingham (1998b), 240 & n. 32]. The reason for
this belief would appear to be the fact that Malcolm asked Eadgar
for his sister's hand [ASC(D) s.a. 1067]. The Crowland Psalter
has the addition of the obituary under 18 March of a person whose
name starts with "A", in the same hand as additions
giving the obituaries of Eadweard and his brother Eadmund [Keynes
(1985), 359-60]. This could be the date of Agatha's death, but
the obituary could also be that of Eadweard's mother Ealdgyth
(Aldgitha).

Father: Unknown.Mother: Unknown.There have been a number of
mutually contradictory theories regarding the origin of Agatha,
and a definitive solution is still lacking. The alternatives are
discussed in detail in the Commentary section.

Commentary

The case for Agatha's parentage, which still
lacks a definitive resolution, requires a detailed discussion.
First, a chronological outline of some of the main developments
in the research of Agatha's origins will be given, concentrating
on the more recent period. Second, a transcript of the more
important primary sources will be given. Third, the numerous
theories regarding Agatha's parentage will each be briefly
described. This will be followed by the main discussion, and a
page of appendices discussing related matter.

Researching Agatha: a chronology

The problem of Agatha's origin has been
researched often, and no attempt is made here to include all
modern scholarship on the subject in this mainly chronological
outline. Certainly, this outline will be more complete for the
more recent period, and it is quite likely that earlier modern
references than the ones given here could be given. For
convenience of reference, some of the main hypotheses which have
been proposed have been given labels such as the "German
Hypothesis" or the "Russian Hypothesis" to
simplify the discussions below.

Late medieval writers were generally content to
repeat the vague or incorrect accounts of one of the early
medieval authors discussed below. Finally, some scholars
attempted to deduce a specific parentage for Agatha from the
available evidence. In 1763, György Pray
argued that Agatha was a daughter of bishop Bruno of Augsburg,
brother of emperor Heinrich II [Pray (1763), 1: 27-8]. I refer to
this hypothesis as the "Bruno Hypothesis" in the
discussions below. In 1778, Daniel Cornides concluded that Agatha
was a daughter of king István (Stephen) I of Hungary by his wife
Gisela, sister of the emperor Heinrich II [Cornides (1778),
232-9]. This theory will be called the "Hungarian
Hypothesis". In 1779, István Katona supported the Bruno
Hypothesis, as did Peter Friedrich Suhm in 1787 [Katona (1779),
1: 260-3; 2: 97-107, not seen by me, cited by Herzog (1939), 1;
Suhm (1787), 3: 726]. This hypothesis was noted (but not
explicitly endorsed) by Lappenberg (who called Agatha a relative
of the emperor) in 1834 [Lappenberg (1834-81), 2: 243 n. 4] and
by Thorpe in 1848 [John Worc. 1: 181 n. 3]. In 1877, in his History
of the Norman Conquest of England, Edward A. Freeman
concluded that Agatha was "most probably a niece" of
emperor Heinrich II [Freeman (1870-9), 2: 376, 671-2]. In 1879,
Harry Breßlau concluded that Agatha was a daughter of Stephen of
Hungary, i.e., the Hungarian Hypothesis [Breßlau (1879-84), 1:
102 n. 1]. In 1938, Sándor Fest also argued that Agatha was a
daughter of Stephen of Hungary [Fest (1938)]. In 1939, in a long
article published in the Hungarian genealogy and heraldry journal
Turul, József Herzog introduced what is here called the
"German Hypothesis", which suggests that Agatha was a
daughter of one of the maternal half-brothers of emperor Heinrich
III [Herzog (1939)]. Unfortunately, I am unable to read the
Hungarian in which this work is written, so I must depend on
other reports about what Herzog said. Von Redlich and Moriarty
both seem to suggest that of the three half-brothers of Heinrich
III, Herzog preferred the candidacy of Ernst II, duke of Swabia,
as the father of Agatha [Redlich (1940), 107; Moriarty (1952),
52]. Vajay states that Herzog "hesitates between Liudolf of
Westfiresland and Ernest of Swabia, as possible fathers for
Agatha." [Vajay (1962), 79, n. 34] In a short article in
1940, Marcellus von Redlich mentioned the problem of Agatha's
origin, listed the candidates for Agatha's father of which he was
aware (Emperor Heinrich II, Bruno of Augsburg, Stephen of
Hungary, Salomon of Hungary, Iaroslav of Russia, the
half-brothers of Heinrich III), and stated as his preference the
version of the German Hypothesis in which Ernst is the father
(called here the "alternate" version of the German
Hypothesis), giving brief reasons (based mostly on secondary
sources) for rejecting the others [Redlich (1940)]. In 1952, G.
Andrews Moriarty discussed the problem of Agatha's origin,
mentioning the alternatives that had been proposed by Freeman,
Fest, and Herzog. After rejecting the others, Moriarty stated
that Fest's conclusion that Agatha was a daughter of Stephen of
Hungary was "highly probable and conclusive." [Moriarty
(1952), 60] In 1954, R. L. Grćme Ritchie, in an appendix to his
book The Normans in Scotland, considered the parentage
of Agatha, and after rejecting the Hungarian Hypothesis,
concluded that the Bruno Hypothesis was "perfectly
tenable" [Ritchie (1954), 392]. In 1962, Szabolcs de Vajay
presented arguments against the Hungarian Hypothesis (mainly
citing only secondary sources written in Hungarian), and
supported the variant of Herzog's theory in which Liudolf of
Braunschweig was presented as the father of Agatha [Vajay
(1962)]. The paper was widely cited, and a significant number of
authors regarded the matter as having been settled by Vajay's
paper. This is the "main" variation of the "German
Hypothesis". A 1971 paper by Vajay has more information on
Liudolf's supposed daughters, but contains nothing new relevant
to Agatha's parentage [Vajay (1971)]. Although I have become
convinced from my research that the German Hypothesis is the most
likely alternative from among the numerous weak choices, Vajay's
discussion and documentation is inadequate on several points,
especially with regard to the family of the empress Gisela
(Liudolf's mother). In 1975, Gerd Wunder, accepting Vajay's
version of the German Hypothesis, suggested that Agatha had had
an earlier marriage to Vladimir of Novgorod (1020-52), son of
Iaroslav [Wunder (1975)]. This would explain how Agatha arrived
in Russia, where Eadweard is believed to have been married, but
Wunder conceded that there was no source to prove his
unconvincing theory. In 1984, Gabriel Ronay published an article
on Eadweard the Exile [Ronay (1984)] and then followed it up with
a book which went into much more detail [Ronay (1989)]. Both the
article and the book argue for the German Hypothesis. The
documentation is usually inadequate, and the author frequently
takes liberties with his sources. The book often reads more like
historical fiction than history. In 1996, René Jetté published
an article in the New England Historical and Genealogical
Register suggesting that Agatha was a daughter of Iaroslav I
of Russia [Jetté (1996)]. At the time the article appeared, it
was widely thought that this theory was a new one, but Pavsic
later cited an example to show that the theory had been around
since at least the nineteenth century [Pavsic (2001), 82 n. 67].
Jetté's theory is here called the "Russian
Hypothesis".

Jetté's article appears to have opened the
floodgates, for in the next ten years there appeared as many
articles on Agatha's origin as had appeared in the previous sixty
years. It would seem that at least part of this surge in activity
can be attributed to the internet. In 1995, the year before
Jetté's article appeared, the internet newsgroup
soc.genealogy.medieval and the internet mailing list GEN-MEDIEVAL
made their first appearance. While soc.genealogy.medieval and
GEN-MEDIEVAL are technically different entities, they are
"gated" so that all messages from one are sent to the
other, so that they act together as one big message board. Even
before the appearance of Jetté's article, someone who was
familiar with Jetté's research was posting "teasers"
to soc.genealogy.medieval, stating that a new solution to
Agatha's parentage was forthcoming. Within a few days after the
issue containing the article arrived in the mailboxes of
subscribers, brief outlines of the main arguments were appearing
in the newsgroup, so that a wide circle of genealogists,
including many who did not subscribe to the Register,
became quickly aware of the new research. Follow-up articles were
mentioned on the newsgroup as soon as they appeared, and this no
doubt contributed to the momentum. However, one also gets the
feeling that the appearance of Jetté's article altered the
common impression that the matter had been "settled",
and that this has encouraged genealogists to try to find new
solutions to the problem.

In 1998, the New England Historical and
Genealogical Register published an article by David Faris
and Douglas Richardson which severely criticized Jetté's
article, and argued that the German Hypothesis was correct. There
was no attempt to review the basic evidence, and most of the
paper was spent criticizing specific points in Jetté's article.
Also in 1998, Norman W. Ingham published two articles strongly
supporting the Russian Hypothesis. One, in the New England
Historical and Genealogical Register, concentrated mainly on
the onomastic evidence relevant to the problem [Ingham (1998a)].
The longer (and more important) article, in Russian History,
has given what is to date the most detailed discussion in favor
of the Russian Hypothesis and also the most ardent criticism (at
times excessive) of the German Hypothesis [Ingham (1998b)]. In
2000, Janko Pavsic supported the Russian Hypothesis and argued
against the German Hypothesis, in a paper that concentrated on
generally unconvincing onomastic arguments [Pavsic (2000);
English translation in Pavsic (2001)]. In 2002, an article by
John Carmi Parsons strongly criticised Janko Pavsic's article
[Parsons (2002); in a bizarre blunder, the author of the previous
paper was misnamed "Pavel Javsic", with the incorrect
surname appearing throughout the paper]. The article contains a
good discussion of how genealogical arguments involving
onomastics are often pressed to far. The author concluded that
the case was not proven either way (referring to the German
Hypothesis and the Russian Hypothesis), and ended by offering two
additional theories "to indicate just how far we are from
the last word on this question." [Parsons (2002), 52] One
theory suggested that Edward may have married twice. The other
suggested that Agatha may have been the daughter of a count
Cristinus (the "Cristinus Hypothesis"). Neither of
these theories was pressed as being definitive. Also in 2002,
Gregory Lauder-Frost published a two-page article pointing out
the controversy which had developed regarding Agatha's origins
[Lauder-Frost (2002)]. Several of the recently published papers
were briefly mentioned, and the author expressed a preference for
the Hungarian Hypothesis. In 2003, a long article on Agatha's
origins by Ian Mladjov appeared. The article gave a very good
outline of the main research on Agatha during the past fifty
years, and concluded by offering yet another theory on her
origin, here called the "Bulgarian Hypothesis". This
hypothesis suggests that Agatha was a daughter of Gavril Radomir
(d. 1015), king of Bulgaria, a maternal granddaughter of king
Géza I of Hungary (d. 997), and a stepdaughter of Aba Samuel (d.
1044), another king of Hungary. It also makes her a paternal
granddaughter of another woman named Agatha [Mladjov (2003)].
This paper is hindered in many places by the appearance of spaces
where accented characters should have appeared instead. This does
not seem to be the author's fault, but appears to be the result
of poor production standards by the publisher in the printing of
the article. In 2003, an article by William Humphreys argued in
favor of the Russian Hypothesis [Humphreys (2003)]. In a
follow-up article in 2004, Humphreys proposed as an alternate
hypothesis the possibility that Agatha was a sister of Anastasia,
wife of Iaroslav's son Vsevelod (d. 1093), and apparently
daughter of the Byzantine emperor Constantine IX
"Monomachos" (the "Byzantine Hypothesis")
[Humphreys (2004), 280]. However, the author regarded this as
less likely than the Russian Hypothesis [ibid., 287]. The main
thrust of the article is that Agatha might have had Greek
ancestry, for he also suggests that Iaroslav may have been the
son of Anna of Byzantium [ibid., 284-5]. In 2009, John P.
Ravilious proposed what is here called the "Polish
Hypothesis", in which Agatha is conjectured to be a daughter
of duke Mieszko II of Poland by his wife Richenza, granddaughter
of the emperor Otto II by his Byzantine wife Theophanu [Ravilious
(2009)].

The Sources

Here, we give an outline of the main primary
sources for the parentage of Agatha, and for the exile of the
sons of Eadmund Ironside. There are numerous sources other than
the ones which are listed here, but the other sources which are
of any value have taken their information from one of the sources
given below.

Adam of Bremen

Adam of Bremen, writing about 1070, states that
Eadmund (Ironside, here wrongly described as a brother of
Ćthelred II) was killed by poison, and that his sons (unnamed)
were condemned to exile in Russia ["Frater Adelradi
Emund, vir bellicosus, in gratiam victoris veneno sublatus est;
filii eius in Ruzziam exilio dampnati." Adam of Bremen,
ii, 51, MGH SS 7: 324]. Although he gives no information on
Agatha, Adam's account is important in giving early testimony
that the exile of Eadmund's sons included time in Russia.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Accounts in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
entered under the years 1057 and 1067, but not contemporary with
those dates (having been written perhaps soon after 1100, perhaps
a bit earlier), are the first to give Agatha's name and
information about her origin. The 1057 entry gives Agatha's name
and states that she was a relative of the emperor (unnamed)
["Her com Eadward ćţeling to Englalande se wćs
Eadwerdes brođor sunu kynges Eadmund 'cing'; Irensid wćs
geclypod for his snellscipe. Ţisne ćţeling Cnút hćfde
forsend on Ungerland to beswicane. Ac he ţćr geţeh to godan
men, swa him God uđe, & him wel gebyrede. swa ţ. he begeat
ţćs caseres mága to wife, & bi ţćre fćgerne bearnteam
gestrynde, seo wćs Agathes gehaten." ASC(D) s.a. 1057
(Translation: "Here the ćtheling Edward came to
England; he was son of King Edward's brother Edmund, [who] was
called 'Ironside' for his bravery. King Cnut had sent this
ćtheling away into Hungary to betray, but he there grew to be a
great man, as God granted him and became him well, so that he won
the emperor's relative for wife, and by her bred a fine family;
she was called Agatha." ASC(Eng), 187-8)]. The 1067
account states rather vaguely that Margaret's mother's (i.e.,
Agatha's) family goes back to the emperor Heinrich (which
Heinrich is not stated) ["... & hire modor cynn
gćđ to Heinrice casere ţe hćfde anwald ofer Rome."
ASC(D) s.a. 1067 (p. 202) (Translation: "... and her
[i.e., Margaret's] mother's family goes back to the emperor Henry
who had dominion over Rome." ASC(Eng), 202)]. Only the
Hungarian exile is mentioned.

Note from the capitalization of the entry just
quoted that the editor of Simeon of Durham was interpreting the
sentence as meaning "Indeed, Eadward took in marriage
Agatha, a daughter of the German emperor Heinrich." Such a
reading of the word germanus is the origin of the
theories that Agatha was a daughter of either Heinrich II or
Heinrich III, both known to be false relationships. In fact, the
word used here is not "Germanus" the
geographical adjective, but "germanus" the
relationship term, and the correct translation seems to be
"Indeed, Eadward took in marriage Agatha, daughter of a germanus
of the emperor Heinrich." The meaning of "germanus"
is discussed in Appendix 3.

William of Malmesbury

William of Malmesbury, in his Gesta Regum
Anglorum, written in 1125, states that Eadmund Ironside's
sons Eadwig [Edwius, a mistake for Eadmund] and Eadweard
were sent to the king of Sweden to be killed, but that being
spared by his mercy, they went to the king of Hungary, where the
elder died and the younger brother (presumably Eadweard) married
Agatha, sister of the queen ["Filii ejus Edwius et
Edwardus, missi ad regem Swevorum ut perimerentur, sed
miseratione ejus conservati, Hunorum regem petierunt; ubi, dum
benigne aliquo tempore habiti essent, major diem obiit, minor
Agatham reginć sororem in matrimonium accepit." Wm.
Malmes., Gesta Regum, c. 180 (vol. 1, p. 218)]. Here,
Eadweard's brother is incorrectly called Eadwig.

Geoffrey Gaimar wrote his Lestorie des
Engles probably after 1135 and certainly before 1147.
Geoffrey has a long legendary account of the sons of Eadmund
Ironside, whom he incorrectly calls Eadgar and Ćthelred ["Li
vns ert Edgar apelez, / Li altres out nun Edelret:"
("One was called Eadgar, / The other's name was
Ćthelred") Gaimar 4516-7]. Of these, it is Eadgar who
is later stated to be the father of Margaret and Eadgar the
Ćtheling [Gaimar 4647-4652], so it is evidently he who is
intended to be identified with Eadweard the Exile. According to
Geoffrey's story, the two boys were entrusted to a Dane named
Walgar, and sent to Denmark, where they remained for twelve years
[Gaimar 4503-4522]. After this time, Cnut heard from his wife
Emma that the English wanted to make the boys king, so Cnut
ordered that they should be maimed [Gaimar 4567-70]. Walgar,
warned of the plot, fled with the boys to Hungary, passing
through Russia on the way ["Si espleita son errer. / Ken
sul cinc iurs passat Susie, / E vint en terre de Hungrie. / Le
siste iur est ariuez / De suz Gardimbre, la citez: / Li reis i
ert e la raine, / A ki Hungrie estait acline." ("He
[Walgar] so well accomplished his journey / That in only five
days he passed Russia, / And came to the land of Hungary. / The
sixth day he arrived / Beneath the city of Gardimbre. / The king
was there and the queen, / To whom Hungary was subject.")
Gaimar 4582-8]. Walgar then entrusted the boys to the king of
Hungary, telling him that they were the rightful heirs of England
[Gaimar 4592-4618]. After three years "Eadgar" became a
lover of the daughter of the king (presumably of Hungary) and the
lady became pregnant ["Edgar out nun, mult fu senez. /
La fille al rei en fist son dru; / E cil lamat, co fu seu: / Ainz
ke passast tut lan enter, / Avint la dame a enceinter."
("Eadgar was his name. He was well favoured. / The
king's daughter took him for her lover. / And he loved her; this
was known; / Before a whole year had passed, / The lady became
pregnant.") Gaimar 4624-8]. Then the king gave his
daughter to "Eadgar" and made him his heir ["Li
reis sa fille a Edgar donat: / Veanz sa gent cil lespusat; / E li
reis fist a tuz sauer, / Apres son iur sait Edgar heir:"
("The king gave his daughter to Eadgar. / Before his
people, he married her, / And the king gave all to know / That
Eadgar should be his heir after his days.") Gaimar
4639-42]. "Eadgar" and his wife become the parents of
Margaret and Eadgar the Ćtheling ["De cest Edgar e de
sa femme, / Eissit la preciose gemme, / Margarete lapelat lom, /
Raine en fist rei Malcolom. / Ele aueit vn son frere ainnez, /
Edgar lAdeling estait nomez." ("From this
Eadgar and his wife / Issued the precious gem, / Margaret they
called her. / King Malcolm made her his queen. / She had an elder
brother, / Eadgar the Ćtheling was he named.") Gaimar
4646-4652]. Then, after the death of their father, Margaret and
Eadgar the Ćtheling are sent for by the English, but on the way
there a storm drives them to Scotland, where Malcolm seizes them
and marries Margaret [Gaimar 4657-4662]. Although Geoffrey
clearly used sources which are now lost, his work has such large
doses of legend and romance that he is not a trustworthy source.
His account of the exile of Eadmund Ironside's sons clearly has a
large dose of fiction, and any attempt to disentangle truth from
Geoffrey's fictionalized account in order to use them as
"evidence" is fraught with difficulties.

Ailred of Rievaulx

The Genealogia Regum Anglorum was
written in 1153 or 1154 by Ailred of Rievaulx, who was brought up
in the Scottish royal household and got some of his information
directly from king David, grandson of Agatha [Ingham (1998),
249]. Unfortunately, the information he gives is contradictory.
On one occasion he states that Agatha's daughter Margaret was
descended from the royal seed of the English and the Hungarians
["Hanc religiosa regina Margareta, hujus regis mater,
quć de semine regio Anglorum et Hungariorum exstitit oriunda,
allatam in Scotia quasi munus hćreditarium transmisit ad filios."
Ailred of Rievaulx, Genealogia Regum Anglorum, PL 195:
715]. Thus, in this statement, he appears to be implying that
Agatha was of Hungarian royal descent.

The main hypotheses are listed here, along with
the labels that they have been assigned for purposes of the
discussion below. A few impossible theories which can be easily
dismissed are not given labels.

Falsely attributed
father: Salomon,
d. 1087, king of Hungary, 1063-74.[OV; see above for details] Orderic Vitalis
is the only early medieval source to name the alleged father of
Eadweard's wife. However, the claim is chronologically
impossible.

Falsely attributed
father: Heinrich II,
d. 13 July 1024, emperor.[e.g., Burke (1848-51), 1: ped. cxix; 2:
ped. xxxviii] Although the secondary sources giving this
relationship of which I am aware do not state sources, it is
clear that this theory came about because "filia germani
imperatoris Heinrici" was misinterpreted as
"daughter of the German emperor Heinrich" [see Appendix
3 for the meaning of germanus]. However, it is virtually
impossible that a child of Heinrich II, if one had existed, would
have gone unmentioned by continental sources.

Falsely attributed
father: Heinrich III,
d. 5 October 1056, emperor.[e.g., Baverstock (1832), 20] This comes
about by the same misunderstanding as the previous theory. It is
chronologically impossible.

Falsely attributed
father: Hardicanute,
d. 8 June 1042, king of Denmark and England.[Felch (1894), 2, mentions this claim, the
ultimate source of which was apparently royal pedigrees published
by Reusner in 1592; this reference was pointed out by Todd
Farmerie on soc.genealogy.medieval] The supposed logic behind
this chronologically impossible theory is unknown.

Background: the exile of the sons of
Eadmund Ironside and the return of Eadweard the Exile

It is clear that Eadmund Ironside's infant
sons, Eadmund and Eadweard, went into exile soon after his death
in 1016. It is also clear that the surviving son, Eadweard, was
living in Hungary when his uncle king Eadweard the Confessor sent
for him in the 1050's. Eadweard's activities between 1016 and
1057 are poorly documented, and depend almost entirely on sources
which are not contemporary. While it is likely that our sources
from the first half of the twelfth century preserve some reliable
traditions, they are, as we can see, not entirely consistent, and
in some cases verifiably false.

Adam of Bremen is the only source to mention
the princes which is close to being contemporary. He states that
they were condemned to exile in Russia. Thus, there is a strong
probability that at least part of their time in exile was spent
in Russia. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle knows only about
the time in Hungary. John of Worcester, William of Malmesbury,
and Ailred of Rievaulx all state that the exile started off in
Sweden and that they then went to Hungary. Orderic Vitalis and
Geoffrey Gaimar have them going first to Denmark and then to
Hungary, with Gaimar mentioning that they passed Russia on the
way to Hungary. The Laws of Edward of the Confessor
mention only Eadweard, and states that he went to Russia, where
he was married. The modern consensus seems to be an itinerary
which includes Sweden, Russia, and Hungary, in that order.

It has frequently been stated that Eadmund and
Eadweard went from Sweden to Russia in 1028 and from Russia to
Hungary in 1046, but it is very misleading to suggest that such
chronological details can be deduced from the slim evidence at
hand, even if the itinerary of Sweden to Russia to Hungary is
tentatively accepted. Both dates come primarily from pieces of
evidence that may not have anything to do with the movements of
the exiled family. The 1028 date is primarily based on the fact
that king Cnut conquered Norway in that year [ASC(E) s.a. 1028].
Olaf of Norway and his son were forced to flee Norway, and they
went to Sweden and then to Russia [Óláfs saga Helga, c. 181, Heimskringla,
474]. Jetté has Cnut defeating the Swedes (is this an
error for the Norwegians?) in 1028 [Jetté (1996), 418;
he is followed by Ingham (1998b), 234]. It has been conjectured
that it was at this time that the English princes went from
Sweden to Russia [Vajay (1962), 72; Wunder (1975), 82; Jetté
(1996), 418; Ingham (1998b), 234]. Ronay accepts the accounts of
Geoffrey Gaimar and Orderic Vitalis that the princes were first
sent to Denmark [Ronay (1989), 28-40 passim], and he
then has the English princes move from Denmark to Sweden and then
from there to Russia in 1028×9, following the path of Olaf
[ibid., 40-1, 52-3]. After spending many years in Russia,
Eadweard is then supposed to have moved to Hungary in 1046 as a
part of the army that helped Andrew gain the Hungarian throne in
that year [Vajay (1962), 72-3; Wunder (1975), 82; Ronay (1984),
47; Jetté (1996), 419-20; Ingham (1998b), 235].

The problem with these scenarios comes from the
apparent underlying assumption that the movements of the exiled
family must necessarily be the direct result of political events
which appear in the surviving sources. It is misleading to take
such attempts at "reading between the lines" and
interpret them as verified history. In fact, our information on
the exile is very fragmentary and comes almost entirely from
sources of a century later. It can be regarded as reasonably
certain that the exiled family was in Hungary at the time that
king Eadweard the Confessor sent for them. It is also probable
that their exile included time in Sweden and Russia (but see the
Polish Hypothesis below for a different opinion on this).
However, attempts to narrow down the time of movement from one
region to another are only conjectures.

Comparing the sources

Clearly, the different sources say different
things about the origin of Agatha. The early accounts we have on
Agatha's parentage can be placed in four main categories.

First, there are the sources in which
Agatha is related to an emperor. This includes the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle, John of Worcester (and numerous others
who use him as a source), and one of the alternate
accounts of Ailred of Rievaulx, with the latter two
specifying that Agatha was the daughter of a germanus
of emperor Heinrich. John of Worcester's genealogical
appendix explicitly names the emperor as Heinrich III.

Second, there are sources in which Agatha
is a member of the Hungarian royal family. This includes
Orderic Vitalis, Geoffrey Gaimar, and the other account
of Ailred. The only one to identify the father is
Orderic, and we know that his statement is
chronologically impossible.

Third, there is the interpolation made ca.
1200 into the Laws of Edward the Confessor,
which indicates that Agatha was a member of the Russian
royal family. Although she is not explicitly called a
daughter of king Malesclodus, it is arguable
that that was the interpolator's intent.

Finally, the is the account of William of
Malmesbury, who states that Agatha was a sister of the
Hungarian queen, whose identity is not specified.

The natural first attempt would be to look for
an individual who simultaneously fits into all of the above
categories. However, it has not proved possible to find a
parentage for Agatha which agrees with all of these sources.
Thus, there seems to be the inescapable conclusion that some of
these sources are unreliable. The following table indicates how
well the various pieces of basic information match with the
various hypotheses which have been proposed, ranging from an
excellent fit with the statement of the evidence to being
inconsistent with the evidence. Some cases which would involve
significantly stretching the definition of a word have been rated
poor or very poor. Of course, the first two columns are related,
but one is more specific than the other. The first two columns
assume that any emperor Heinrich is allowed.

Relative
of emperor
Heinrich

Daughter
of germanus
of emperor
Heinrich

Sister of
Hungarian
queen

Daughter of
Hungarian
king

Descendant
of Russian
Royaly

Bruno Hypothesis

excellent

excellent

poor

inconsistent

inconsistent

Bulgarian Hypothesis

very poor

inconsistent

inconsistent

very good

inconsistent

Byzantine Hypothesis

inconsistent

inconsistent

inconsistent

inconsistent

inconsistent

Cristinus Hypothesis

poor

inconsistent

inconsistent

inconsistent

good

German Hypothesis

excellent

very good

poor

inconsistent

inconsistent

Hungarian Hypothesis

excellent

poor

inconsistent

excellent

inconsistent

Polish Hypothesis

good

inconsistent

excellent

inconsistent

poor

Russian Hypothesis

inconsistent

inconsistent

excellent

inconsistent

excellent

As can be seen from the table, every one of the
hypotheses rates as inconsistent in at least two columns, and
each theory rates as either inconsistent or poor in at least
three columns. Clearly, it has not been possible to find a theory
which fits well with all of the basic primary evidence. It would
be unwise to try to assign a "score" to each of the
theories by somehow tabulating the results from this table, which
is only a rough guide (and contains some entries which are
judgement calls). The evidence for Agatha's parentage is
complicated, and depends on many additional factors which could
not be easily enumerated on such tables, and which may be weighed
differently by different researchers. Also, the information in
the table could be potentially misleading. Opponents of the
German Hypothesis could complain that the information from the
first two cloumns might not be independent, and that including
both gives the German Hypothesis an extra "vote".
Opponents of the Russian Hypothesis could complain that the last
column is based on a late interpolation. Thus, it is important to
consider the comparative reliability of each of the sources.

Let us first consider the accounts in which
Agatha is a member of the Hungarian royal family. As already
noted, there are three basic twelfth century sources for this.
Orderic Vitalis states that Eadweard married a daughter of king
Salomon of Hungary and then became king of Hungary. (It would
appear that several researchers on Agatha have noticed only the
statement in which Orderic has Eadweard marrying a daughter of an
unidentified king of Hungary, and have overlooked another passage
in Orderic's work where the father-in-law is identified as
Salomon.) However, it is clearly chronologically impossible for
Salomon to be the father of Agatha (see Appendix 5), and the
statement that Eadweard was king of Hungary is also false. Thus,
Orderic is clearly not a reliable guide to the identity of
Agatha's father. The second source making Agatha a Hungarian
princess is Geoffrey Gaimar. As already noted, he is not a
reliable source, and there is no reason to trust his testimony
unless it is confirmed elsewhere. This leaves the account of
Ailred of Rievaulx, who states that St. Margaret was of royal
English and Hungarian descent ["Hanc religiosa regina
Margareta, hujus regis mater, quć de semine regio Anglorum et
Hungariorum exstitit oriunda, ..." Ailred of Rievaulx, Genealogia
Regum Anglorum, PL 195: 715]. Now, Ailred personally knew
king David I, Marageret's youngest son, and his testimony would
therefore ordinarily rank highly, were it not for the fact that
he later contradicts himself by distinguishing Eadweard's wife
from the Hungarian king's daughter, whom he marries to Eadweard's
brother Eadmund (see Appendix 2). Such a marriage of Eadmund, if
true, would certainly provide a convenient explanation for the
contradictory attribution of Agatha as a Hungarian king's
daughter, which would then be explained as an error. At the very
least, it shows that the evidence for making Agatha a daughter of
the Hungarian king is weak.

The statement that St. Margaret was "ex
parte uero matris ex genere et sanguine regum Rugorum"
comes from an interpolation made about 1200 to the Laws of
Edward the Confessor [" Laws Edw. Conf., c. 35.1*** (p.
664)]. What we would like to know is whether the interpolator was
taking this information from some other source to which he had
access, or whether he was simply expanding on the earlier
statement that Eadweard was married in Russia to a woman of noble
descent. The latter is much more likely, as Norman Ingham seems
to concede, while still arguing that the interpolation be
accepted into evidence [Ingham (1998b), 256]. However, the
interpolator's statement would carry significant weight only if
he were working from some other source, which is much less
likely. Thus, the main value in the Laws of Edward the
Confessor lies in the uninterpolated part, which makes only
the vague statement that Agatha was of noble descent.

This leaves the statement of John of Worcester
and others that Agatha was a daughter of a germanus of
emperor Heinrich (along with the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's
vaguer statement along the same lines) and the statement of
William of Malmesbury that Agatha was a sister of the Hungarian
queen. Unless there are emperor's brothers or Hungarian queens
out there who have remained undocumented, trying to get a
scenario which satisfies both William of Malmesbury and John of
Worcester does not look promising. Among the current proposals,
the closest would seem to be the German Hypothesis, if William of
Malmesbury's soror is interpreted as meaning "first
cousin". However, the use of soror in this way is
very rare, and it is much more likely that William of Malmesbury
meant soror in the usual sense of sister. Thus, we are
left with the alternative that one of the two sources is mistaken
with regard to Agatha's origins.

So, how reliable are John of Worcester and
William of Malmesbury? John and William had very different
styles. William was a historian who interpreted his sources and
rewrote the account in his own words. John was a chronicler who
was more likely to pass information along in the same form in
which he found it in his sources. Both are highly regarded, but
neither would meet modern standards, and both made errors. In
fact, they each made a similar error in their accounts of the
exile of the princes, in the passages leading up to their
statements of Agatha's origin. John of Worcester gives the wrong
name to the king of Hungary who accepted the princes in exile,
calling him Salomon, a king who did not reign until later.
William of Malmesbury gives the wrong name to one of the exile
brothers, calling him Eadwig (the name of an uncle) instead of
Eadmund. Neither of these errors seems sufficient to reject the
statements about Agatha without further evidence. After praising
William of Malmesbury as a historian, Norman Ingham says of John
of Worcester: "The form of the passage in John reveals his
cut-and-paste method of composition; he has patched several
pieces of 'information' together without proper transitions -
Sweden, King Salomon of Hungary, the death of Edmund, the
marriage of Edward - thereby making jumps in time and logical
coherence." [Ingham (1998b), 248] However, there seems to be
a double standard here. After all, with less transition than John
of Worcester, William of Malmesbury jumps from Sweden to the
(unnamed) king of Hungary to the death Eadmund to the marriage of
Eadweard. Indeed, if it were not for the different information on
Agatha's parentage, there would be reason to suspect that John
and William were using the same source here.

William of Malmesbury's statement that Agatha
was a sister of the queen of Hungary is not confirmed by any
independent source. Besides sources which are clearly dependent
of John of Worcester, statements that agree with John's account
appear in both the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Ailred of
Rievaulx. Are these statements independent, or do they go back to
a common source? If so, can anything be determined about this
source? The fact that John of Worcester used a source very
similar to the D (Worcester) manuscript of ASC is well known [See
the remarks by Plummer in ASC 2: lxxxiii-lxxxiv]. However, the
problem with assuming that John used D or a source similar to D
for his statement is that John gives more information, stating
that Agatha was a daughter of a germanus of emperor
Heinrich, while D only states that she was a relative. Thus,
since D (being the earlier source) did not copy from John, and it
is improbable that John invented the more precise additional
information, the connection of both John and the D manuscript to
Worcester would indicate that they both got their statements from
a common source located there, as suggested by Moriarty [Moriarty
(1952), 55]. Ealdred, later archbishop of York, who was sent on
the mission to bring Eadweard the Exile back to England, had also
been bishop of Worcester, so Worcester would be a natural place
to find information about Eadweard's family. With Ailred the
situation is not so clear. He certainly had at least one
independent source which led him to his statements that
Margaret's mother had royal Hungarian blood and that Eadmund
married a daughter of the Hungarian king. Ailred must have had
another source which led him to his statements in three separate
places that Agatha was a daughter of a germanus of
emperor Heinrich or a cognata of the emperor. This could
very well have been the same Worcester source used by John of
Worcester and the D manuscript of the Chronicle. Indeed,
Ailred's use of the word germanus here makes this more
likely than not. Thus, for convenience, let us use the term
"Worcester Source" to denote this hypothetical common
source of the statement that Agatha was a daughter of a germanus
of emperor Heinrich.

If we assume that there was a common source
behind all of these statements that Agatha was a relative of (or
a daughter of a germanus of) emperor Heinrich, then what
can we say about the date of such a source? It would certainly
have to predate the writing of the 1057 and 1067 entries into the
D manuscript of the Chronicle. While it is clear from
the wording itself that the entries are not strictly
contemporary, there has been some disagreement about how much
later they were written. Because Margaret's ancestry from the
house of Wessex is given, Plummer thought that the entry was not
written until after the marriage of Margaret's daughter to Henry
I in 1100 [ASC 2: lxxviii]. On the other hand, N. R. Ker dated
the handwriting of the 1071-9 entries (written after the 1057 and
1067 entries) to the 1070's or 1080's [Ker (1957), 254]. Dorothy
Whitelock expressed an opinion somewhere in between. She stated
that Plummer's dating to after 1100 was not certain, but she
pointed out that no life of Margaret would have been written
before 1093, and suggested that Ker's dates seemed too early
[Whitelock (1979), 1: 115]. Here, Whitelock was assuming that the
information about Margaret came from a written source (presumably
a life written after her death), but G. P. Cubbin, editor of the
most recent edition of the Worcester (D) manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle, stated that a formal source would not be needed,
and that Ker's dating "need not be doubted on these
grounds" [ASC-D (Cubbin), lxxiv]. Thus, since the dating of
the handwriting makes a date significantly later than 1100
doubtful, and since Plummer's reasons are far from conclusive
anyway, our hypothetical Worcester Source can be dated to ca.
1100 or earlier.

One common way of resolving a discrepancy
between two sources is to explain how one of them arose as a
natural error. One such explanation, first given by Jetté and
expanded by Ingham, claims that the Worcester Source was an error
resulting from a misunderstanding of the statement that Agatha
was a sister of the Hungarian queen [Jetté (1996), 423; Ingham
(1998b), 244, 248]. This needs to be examined in detail. The
argument assumes that a statement that Agatha was a sister of the
queen of Hungary was the main surviving piece of information
available to the chroniclers. Two Hungarian queens during the
period were Gisela, wife of Stephen I and sister of emperor
Heinrich II, and Judith, wife of Salomon and daughter of emperor
Heinrich III. While it is chronologically impossible for either
of these queens to have been a sister of Agatha, the theory goes
that one or the other of them was mistaken for the sister of
Agatha (starting with an earlier source similar to William of
Malmesbury which stated that Agatha was a sister of the Hungarian
queen), and as a result it was mistakenly assumed that Agatha was
related to an emperor Heinrich, resulting in the information
given in the Worcester Source. With the sources depending on the
Worcester Source explained away in this manner, William of
Malmesbury is portrayed as the only early reliable source.
However, there is a serious problem with this scenario. If the
author of the Worcester Source mistakenly assumed that Agatha was
a sister of either Gisela or Judith, then he would have deduced
that Agatha was a daughter or a sister of an emperor Heinrich.
Why then, would the Worcester author make Agatha the daughter of
a germanus of Heinrich, contrary to this deduction?
Having made a mistake identifying the queen, he would then have
had to make another mistake regarding the relationship of that
queen to the emperor in order to get the account that was passed
on. Thus, trying to explain away the information of the Worcester
Source as a simple error from an account similar to William of
Malmesbury simply will not work. Looking at the other direction,
if Agatha were a daughter of a germanus of Heinrich III,
as the genealogical appendix of John of Worcester states, then
Agatha would be a first cousin of Salomon's wife Judith. Thus,
the alternate argument would be that the Worcester Source was
right, and that William of Malmesbury, or his source, erred by
changing a cousin into a sister. This may not be right, but it
would be more likely than the more complicated series of two
errors needed to make Jetté's theory true.

Thus, of the sources giving information about
the ancestry of Agatha, the accounts giving her Hungarian royal
blood seem very doubtful, and the one giving her royal Russian
blood is a late interpolation. If the accounts making Agatha a
relative of the emperor were independent, their testimony would
be fomidable, but it is much more likely that they are not
independent, and go back to a hypothetical common source which we
have named the "Worcester Source". This Worcester
Source would be earlier than the work of William of Malmesbury,
and would have to be given a slight edge for that reason.
However, no firm conclusion is possible, and either one of the
Worcester Source or William of Malmesbury might be correct.

Different theories on the origin of
Agatha

As already noted, there is a plethora of
hypotheses regarding the origin of Agatha, some of which have
first appeared relatively recently. Except for a handful of old
theories which can easily be eliminated as impossible, these
hypotheses have each been supplied above with a label for ease of
reference. The two hypotheses which seem to have the best chance
of being true, the German Hypothesis and the Russian Hypothesis,
will first be discussed in detail (with some discussions deferred
to the Appendices), and then the other theories will be more briefly
discussed in the approximate order in which they were proposed.

The German Hypothesis

The German Hypothesis argues that Agatha was a
daughter of one of the half-brothers of the emperor Heinrich III,
and was apparently first proposed in 1939 by József Herzog
[Herzog (1939), in Hungarian, which I cannot read]. The next
year, Marcellus von Redlich wrote a short paper accepting
Herzog's arguments, and favoring Ernst II of Swabia as the father
(the "alternate" version of the German Hypothesis). In
1962, Szabolcs de Vajay published the "main" version of
the German Hypothesis, proposing that Liudolf of Braunschweig
(Brunswick) was Agatha's father. Since that time, the German
Hypothesis has been accepted as proven by many sources, most
notably Ronay in his 1984 paper and 1989 book [Ronay (1984,
1989)]. Since the appearance of Jetté's article in 1996
supporting the Russian Hypothesis, the main paper arguing in
favor of the German Hypothesis has been the article of Faris and
Richardson [Faris-Richardson (1998)].

The logic behind the German Hypothesis is
pretty straightforward. In what is probably the earliest source
to mention the origin of Agatha, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
states that she was a relative of the emperor Heinrich. Later,
John of Worcester and Ailred of Rievaulx (in one of his
contradictory statements) add more detail to this by stating that
Agatha was the daughter of a germanus of the emperor
Heinrich, and John's genealogical appendix adds even more detail
by specifying that the Heinrich in question was Heinrich III.
Since Heinrch III had no full brothers, it is then argued by
process of elimination that Agatha must have been a daughter of
one of the older half-brothers of Heinrich. Consideration of
these leads the supporters of main version of the German
Hypothesis to conclude that Agatha's father was Liudolf von
Braunschweig (d. 1038). No claim has been made that there is any
direct evidence making Agatha a daughter of Liudolf.

The discussion of the family of Heinrich III is
inadequate in those papers which espouse the German Hypothesis
[Herzog (1939); Vajay (1962); Ronay (1984); Ronay (1985); Faris
& Richardson (1998)]. However, a detailed discussion of the
maternal half-brothers of Heinrich can be found in Appendix 4,
based mainly on publications which do not mention Agatha.
Evidence is given there that of the three half-brothers of
Heinrich, only Liudolf, who is known to have had sons, makes a
reasonable candidate for the father of Agatha (the
"main" version of the German Hypothesis). The
"alternate" version of the German Hypothesis is that
another of the half-brothers, Ernst of Swabia, was the father,
but, as shown in Appendix 4, he appears to have died without
issue. The third half-brother, Hermann of Swabia, being underage
in 1030, makes an extremely improbable father for Agatha.
Although it is impossible to be sure in such a thinly documented
age, it is rather unlikely that any additional half-brothers of
Heinrich III have remained unidentified (or at least none who
survived long enough to be the father of Agatha).

It is certainly the case that the German
Hypothesis accepts some of the primary accounts at the expense of
the others, a drawback which it shares with all of its
competitors. However, if Eadweard's brother Eadmund were married
to a Hungarian princess, as a statement of Ailred suggests (see
Appendix 2), then the accounts in which Agatha is Hungarian could
be explained as an error due to confusion. The German Hypothesis
does not make Agatha a sister of the queen of Hungary, as William
of Malmesbury states, but as Vajay pointed out, it does make her
a first cousin of Judith/Sophia, wife of king Salomon of Hungary
and daughter of Heinrich III [Vajay (1962), 74].

The principle objections, to some extent
overlapping, which have been made to the German Hypothesis by its
critics are as follows:

Arguing by process of elimination is seen
as a problematic method.

It is suggested that the definition of the
word germanus has been abused by proponents of
the hypothesis.

It is argued that the underlying premise
is wrong because the sources claiming a relationship to
Heinrich III are secondary and/or unreliable.

Liudolf is seen as a chronologically
unlikely father for Agatha.

It is suggested that a German-English
marriage occurring in eastern Europe is hard to explain.

It is argued that the onomastic evidence
is against the hypothesis.

If true, the German Hypothesis would imply
that the empress Matilda and her first husband the
emperor Heinrich V were related to a prohibited degree.

Some of these criticisms are valid, but others
are overstated or misleading. These objections will be discussed
one-by-one.

The German Hypothesis has been criticized
because it uses the process of elimination to arrive at a
conclusion [Ingham (1998b), 257ff.]. It is certainly true in
general that an argument by process of elimination is less
desirable than an argument using direct evidence. Indeed, the
lack of direct evidence that Agatha was the daughter of Liudolf
is one of the weaknesses of the German Hypothesis. However, when
the basic information is that Agatha was a daughter of a germanus
of Heinrich III, it is likely that our search for a solution is
going to involve a search using the process of elimination. As
pointed out by Ingham, "(s)uccessful process of elimination
requires that we have correctly defined the object of our search,
that our sources are exhaustive and we have cast our net widely
enough, and that we have good and sufficient criteria for
eliminating possibilities." [Ingham (1998b), 257] Thus, we
should find all of the germani of Heinrich III an
examine them for the likelihood that they could be Agatha's
father. If "brother" is the appropriate definition of germanus
in this case, as it seems to be, then the number of candidates is
small (see Appendix 4). The possibility that there was another
sibling of Heinrich who has escaped all of the records is remote.
The reasons for excluding Ernst and Hermann as possible fathers
for Agatha are given in Appendix 4, and these reasons are strong,
if not airtight. I have here assumed that Heinrich III was the
emperor intended [as is explicitly stated in John of Worcester's
genealogical appendix, John Worc. 1: 275]. The possibility of
Heinrich II will be ruled out below in the discussion of the
Bruno Hypothesis.

The German Hypothesis has been criticized for
the way in which the word germanus is used [Ingham
(1998b), 258-60]. Clearly, the meaning of the word germanus
is very important to this argument. The strict Latin definition
is "full brother", i.e., a brother with both parents in
common (as opposed to "half-brother": only one parent
in common). An underlying assumption of the German Hypothesis
(not clearly stated by its proponents) is that the term germanus
allows the definition of half-brother, but also that it is no so
loose as to just mean "relative". The usage of John of
Worcester with regard to the word germanus (and its
corresponding feminine form germana) is examined in
detail in Appendix 3. As used by John, the word almost always
denoted a sibling (one doubtful exception in more than 50
examples), usually a full sibling in those cases when the
information about both parents is known, but sometimes only a
half-sibling (two verified cases out of more than 50). Since
Heinrich III appears to have had no full brothers (and since any
such otherwise unknown full brother would be too young to be the
father of Agatha), it seems highly probable that in this case a
looser form of germanus was intended. But how loose? If germanus
just meant "relative" in this case, why would Agatha be
called a "daughter of a relative of Heinrich" instead
of just being called a "relative of Heinrich"? The fact
that she was called daughter of a germanus clearly
indicates that the word germanus was intended in this
case to be specific rather than general. Thus, if the
information that Agatha was "filia germani imperatoris
Heinrici" is true at all (and there is room for
argument on that point), then germanus was probably
intended to mean "male with at least one parent in
common". For further discussion, see Appendix 3.

Of course, as the critics of the German
Hypothesis would argue, the claim that Agatha was a daughter of a
germanus of Heinrich III is only one of several
possibilities given by the sources, so there is no guarantee that
this underlying assumption of the German Hypothesis is correct.
This disagreement of sources is a definite weakness of the German
Hypothesis, a weakness shared with all of the other hypotheses.
However, as noted above, critics of the hypothesis have gone
further and suggested that the accounts of the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle and John of Worcester have a simple explanation as
a blunder. However, it has been shown above that this explanation
is not so simple. In particular, why would John of Worcester (or
his hypothetical Worcester Source), having supposedly deduced
(from a statement similar to that of William of Malmesbury) that
Agatha was a sister or daughter of an emperor Heinrich, give the
specific information that Agatha was a daughter of a germanus
of Heinrich, in direct contradiction to his alleged deduction?
The evidence of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and John of
Worcester (and one of Ailred's accounts) is open to the
legitimate objection that contrary testimony exists, but the
evididence cannot be explained away in the way that the
supporters of the Russian Hypothesis would like.

Jetté made chronological objections to the
suggestion that Liudolf was the father of Agatha: "However,
the solution would require an exceptionally tight chronology, if
Gisela were born in 993 as some have concluded and Agatha,
proposed as Gisela's granddaughter, in about 1025." [Jetté
(1996), 422, apparently using the date of 1025 given by Vajay
(1962), 73, but note that Jetté himself had placed Agatha's
birth as late as 1030 on p. 420]. However, as noted above, Agatha
could have been born as much as a decade later (although 1030
would be more comfortable), and, as discussed in detail in
Appendix 4, Liudolf was probably born before 1010.

Opponents of the German Hypothesis have also
argued that Agatha's marriage is geographically hard to explain.
The problem is that an Anglo-Saxon prince, apparently residing in
Russia or Hungary, is proposed to have been married to a relative
of the emperor, but there is no obvious political context for
such a marriage. Vajay and Ronay claim that Eadweard and Agatha
were married in 1043 or early 1044 as a result of a triple
alliance between England, the Empire, and Russia in 1043 [Vajay
(1962), 72-4; Ronay (1989), 118]. However, no real evidence is
given for this statement. It is simply a conjecture to explain
how an English prince and a relative of the emperor could have
been married in Russia. Here, Ronay's attempt to use the Laws
of Edward the Confessor on this point to support the German
Hypothesis strains credulity. The lack of a convenient
explanation how a German prince was married to an Anglo-Saxon
exile in Russia or Hungary is a weakness of the German
Hypothesis. However, the sources are scanty, and it is not wise
to assume that every marriage can be placed in its correct
political and geographical context by the surviving evidence.
Nevertheless, this does tilt the argument somewhat in favor of
scenarios like the Russian Hypothesis in which the marriage is
more conveniently explained as a "local" event.

Onomastically, the name Agatha poses a
significant difficulty for the German Hypothesis, as the name
Agatha is unknown in Liudolf's family. Here, it should be noted
that the ancestry of Liudolf's wife Gertrude has not been
convincingly demonstrated, so that the name Agatha could have
come from Gertrude's uncertain ancestry, or from Liudolf's
paternal ancestry, also largely uncertain. In the latter
direction, Donald Jackman, who accepts the German Hypothesis as
proven, would explain Agatha's name on the basis of a conjectured
distant Byzantine ancestry of Liudolf's father Bruno [Jackman
(2000), 40-1, 56]. However, this supposed explanation involves
too many conjectured links (and too distant a descent) to be
convincing. On the whole, the onomastic argument has been
overplayed, but it still somewhat weakens the case for the German
Hypothesis. See Appendix 1 for a more detailed discussion on
onomastics.

If the German Hypothesis were valid, then the
empress Matilda would be related to her first husband, the
emperor Heinrich V. Heinrich V was the son of Heinrich IV, son of
Heinrich III, son of the empress Gisela by her third marriage. On
the other hand, Matilda was the daughter of Matilda/Eadgyth of
Scotland, daughter of St. Margaret, daughter of Agatha, who would
be daughter of Liudolf (assuming the German Hypothesis), son of
Gisela by her first marriage. This possible consanguinity,
apparently first pointed out by Andrew MacEwen [Faris-Richardson
(1998), 235 n. 29], would make Matilda and Heinrich V second
cousins twice removed (degree 3:5). While technically within a
prohibited degree, it may have gone unnoticed. Marriages of
degree 5 often "slipped through the system" and it is
therefore not possible to rule out the German Hypothesis on this
basis.

Not all of the arguments against the German
Hypothesis have been fair. René Jetté, in criticizing this
theory, wrote: "In order to satisfy the assertion of the two
oldest chroniclers (table 2, extracts 1,2), nieces of an emperor
Henry had to be invented." [Jetté (1996), 421] If this were
a valid argument, then it would also be an argument against all
of the other hypotheses which have been advanced, for in each
case Agatha is being identified as an otherwise unknown daughter
of some individual. In fact, some primary sources claim that
Agatha was a niece of an emperor Heinrich, so it is unfair to
suggest that those who use such a source (whether they be right
or wrong in doing so) are "inventing" such a niece. As
another example, in his criticism of the "German Hypothesis,
Norman Ingham wrote the following: "Of more immediate
concern, in my view, is the fact that Agatha's grandchildren
appear not to have heard about her supposed imperial connections.
It would seem nearly impossible that no word of a German tie or a
relationship with a Holy Roman emperor reached them. They
apparently were aware only that she was related somehow to a king
of Hungary." [Ingham (1998b), 261] This statement seems
unreasonable, and rather overzealous, for we have no such
information about what the grandchildren did or did not know
about their grandmother's ancestry. What we do have is a previous
series of arguments from the author, by his own admission
"very speculative" [ibid., 244], in which it is
concluded that "(t)he grandchildren, as far as we can tell,
did not subscribe to the imperial idea, no doubt because they had
never heard it from their mother." [ibid., 243-4]. Turning
speculation into "fact" is not a valid line of
argument.

The German Hypothesis is the most natural
deduction based on one set of the primary sources. Other primary
sources contradict the German Hypothesis, which largely stands or
falls on the reasonable, but far from conclusive, argument that
the apparently earliest sources which give a relationship to
emperor Heinrich are more reliable than those claiming a
Hungarian connection. The geographical and onomastic evidence
does not fit well, but that is far from decisive. In short, the
German Hypothesis in neither so strong as its supporters would
claim nor so weak as its critics would have us believe. In my
opinion, it is a weak candidate which has the dubious distinction
of being slightly more likely than its "strongest"
(i.e., least weak) competitor (the Russian Hypothesis).

The Russian Hypothesis

In 1996, when René Jetté published his theory
that Agatha was a daughter of Iaroslav I of Kiev [Jetté (1996)],
the hypothesis was widely thought to be new. However, Pavsic
cited an earlier example [Pavsic (2001), 82 n. 67] and a search
of Google Books gives several examples that the theory that
Agatha was a daughter of Iaroslav had been around since at least
the 1800's [see, e.g., Nob. Univ. France 19: 51 (1840); Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica NS 2
(1877): 58; Felch (1894)], although I am unaware of an account
earlier than Jetté's which actually sets out the main evidence.
In 1998, the New England Historical and Genealogical Register
published two articles on Agatha, one highly critical of Jetté's
work [Faris-Richardson (1998)] and one highly supportive [Ingham
(1998a)]. In the same year, Ingham published a very detailed
article on the evidence for the Russian Hypothesis [Ingham
(1998b)]. In 2000, an article by Janko Pavsic supported the
Russian Hypothesis, concentrating on onomastic arguments [Pavsic
(2000); English translation in Pavsic (2001)]. The Russian
Hypothesis was also supported in two articles by William
Humphreys in 2003 and 2004, although support in the second
article wavered to the extent that an alternate scenario (the
Byzantine Hypothesis) was proposed [Humphreys (2003, 2004)].

The two main primary sources which have been
advanced as evidence for the Russian Hypothesis are William of
Malmesbury and the Laws of Edward the Confessor. It is a
late addition to the latter source which gives the most direct
statement in favor of the Russian Hypothesis. The original
version, written probably in the 1130's, states that Eadweard
went to Russia, where he was received by king Malesclodus
and married to a woman of noble descent ["... ad terram
Rugorum, quam nos uocamus Russeiam. Quem rex ipsius terre,
Malesclodus nomine, ut audiuit et intellexit, quis et unde esset,
honeste retinuit eum. Et ipse Ćdwardus accepit ibi uxorem ex
nobili genere, ..." Laws Edw. Conf., c. 35-35.1 (p.
664), see above]. As discussed in Appendix 6, Malesclodus
was probably Iaroslav I. Then, an addition made around the year
1200 states that St. Margaret was descended through her mother
from the kings of Russia ["ex parte uero matris ex
genere et sanguine regum Rugorum; ..." Laws Edw. Conf.,
c. 35.1*** (p. 664)]. This does not explicitly call Margaret's
mother a daughter of Malesclodus, but that would seem to
be the natural interpretation. One of the principle pieces of
evidence for the Russian Hypothesisis the Gesta Regum of
William of Malmesbury, which states that Agatha was a sister of
the queen of Hungary. Since one of the queens of Hungary during
that period was Anastasia, daughter of Iaroslav I and wife of
king Andrew I of Hungary, this supports the Russian Hypothesis.

The testimony of Geoffrey Gaimar has also been
used by proponents of the Russian Hypothesis. In mentioning the
arrival of the exiled princes in Hungary, Geoffrey gives "Gardimbre"
as the name of the city where the king and queen of Hungary
resided [Gaimar 4586-8]. Influenced by the fact that a few lines
earlier Geoffrey had mentioned passing by Russia on the way to
Hungary, René Jetté identifies Gardimbre with a
Russian stronghold of Gardorika on Lake Logoda [Jetté (1996),
419]. Norman Ingham states that Gardimbre is probably an
Old French rendition of Old Scandinavian gárđr
("fortified town") or less likely gárđaríki
("realm of towns"), and that Gárđr was
sometimes applied as a place-name in Old Scandinavian sources to
Novgorod or Kiev [Ingham (1998), 239]. Ingham then goes on to
suggest that Geoffrey was mistaking Russia for Hungary, saying:
"It would seem to follow, then, that his king and queen of
Hungary may in actuality represent the grand prince and princess
of Kiev and that Gardimbre ought to be Kiev itself." [Ingham
(1998b), 239-40]

The proposed parentage of Agatha would fit well
geographically and politically with Eadweard's probable exile in
Russia. This is a definite point in favor of the Russian
Hypothesis as compared with the German Hypothesis. It has been
pointed out by Norman Ingham that an eleventh century fresco
appears to show that Iaroslav had five daughters [Ingham
(1998a)]. If accepted as evidence, this would at least show that
Iaroslav had additional daughters above and beyond the ones who
had already been identified. As discussed in Appendix 1, it has
also been argued that the onomastic evidence favors the Russian
Hypothesis.

Critics of the Russian Hypothesis have advanced
the following objections:

The interpolation to the Laws of
Edward the Confessor is late and possibly
unreliable, while the earliest version says nothing about
Agatha being descended from Russian kings.

The account of William of Malmesbury is
not necessarily more reliable than the other twelfth
century authorities.

William of Malmesbury's statement is
vague, and he does not specify which queen of Hungary was
supposedly Agatha's sister.

It is suggested that the testimony of
Geoffrey Gaimar has been misused.

The sources show no indication that
Philippe I or Louis VI of France were related to St.
Margaret or to Eadgyth/Matilda, wife of Henry I of
England.

The fresco is questioned as evidence for
the existence of five daughters of Iaroslav.

It is argued that the onomastic evidence
for the Russian Hypothesis has been overplayed.

It is suggested that Iaroslav might not
have regarded Eadweard as a suitable son-in-law.

If the Russian Hypothesis were true, then
certain marriages would be consanguineous to a prohibited
degree.

As is discussed in the following paragraphs,
some of these objections are valid and some are not.

In the Laws of Edward the Confessor,
the strongest statement about Agatha's origin that she was
descended from Russian kings comes only from an interpolation
which can be dated about 1200. Jetté misstated the evidence when
he claimed that the version of the Laws inserted in Roger of
Hoveden calls Agatha a Russian princess [Jetté (1996), 420], and
he was severely criticized for this by Faris and Richardson
[Faris-Richardson (1998), 225-6]. Indeed, Jetté is wrong on two
counts here, because "descended from Russian Kings" is
not the same thing as "Russian princess" and because
the statement does not appear in Roger of Hoveden but in the
later interpolation. On the other hand, Faris and Richardson are
wrong when they then rely on the following misleading statements
of Ronay: "... the glossarist's description of Agatha as a
lady of royal blood related to the ruler of Russia. From the
phrasing, however, it is clear that the Englist glossarist had no
intention of presenting Agatha as a daughter of Yaroslav the
Great. He was simply restating ... that Agatha was of royal blood
and had married a royal relation of the ruler of Russia in
Russia." [Ronay (1989), 117-8] The words "lady of royal
blood related to the ruler of Russia" are also not an
accurate description of the words in the interpolation, and Ronay
is relying here on the probably false claim that Eadweard's
mother was a sister of Iaroslav's wife [see below for more on
this]. Commenting on these texts, Norman Ingham acknowledged that
neither the original text nor the interpolated text explicitly
states that Eadweard married a daughter of the Russian king, but
then goes on to say that "(b)oth, nonetheless, imply it, and
no other interpretation of either looks plausible." [Ingham
(1998b), 255] This is a reasonable interpretation of the
interpolated text, which, however, as a late expansion of the
original text, has very little authority. On the other hand, the
uninterpolated text quite emphatically makes no such implication.
It states only that Eadweard's wife was of noble descent ("ex
nobili genere"), which in no way implies that she was
the daughter of a king or even of royal descent. In isolation,
the statement would be consistent with Eadweard's wife being a
daughter of the Russian king, but, as noted by John Carmi
Parsons, the writer of the uninterpolated text does not give this
impression [Parsons (2002), 48]. Since the Russian king had been
mentioned in the previous sentence, the writer would probably
have identified Agatha as the king's daughter instead of
describing her as "of noble descent" if he had really
thought that they were father and daughter. Thus, as useful as
the Laws of Edward the Confessor are for verifying the
exile in Russia and for providing us with Russia as the possible
location of Agatha's marriage, the use of this source as direct
evidence for the parentage of Agatha is questionable.

This places a higher burden on the information
gleaned from William of Malmesbury, the other principle source
for the Russian Hypothesis. The Russian Hypothesis requires that
William's statement about Agatha's origin be accepted in
preference to the contradictory statements contained in several
other chroniclers. Ingham and Humphreys have argued in favor of
giving preference to William's information [Ingham (1998b),
240-252; Humphreys (2003), 37-42], but the scenarios which they
offer for the transmission of the information about Agatha's
parentage are extremely speculative. William's information may
indeed be the correct version, but as discussed above, there is
no compelling reason to accept his account at the expense of the
other, contradictory, accounts.

When William states that Agatha was a sister of
the queen of Hungary, he does not come to our assistance by
identifying that queen ["Filii ejus Edwius et Edwardus,
missi ad regem Swevorum ut perimerentur, sed miseratione ejus
conservati, Hunorum regem petierunt; ubi, dum benigne aliquo
tempore habiti essent, major diem obiit, minor Agatham reginć
sororem in matrimonium accepit." Wm. Malmes., Gesta
Regum, c. 180 (vol. 1, p. 218)]. As critics of the
hypothesis have noted, William's failure to specify which queen
of Hungary he was claiming to be Agatha's sister means that it is
not clear that he was referring to Anastasia, wife of Andrew I.
Thus, the process of elimination (a method criticized by
supporters of the Russian Hypothesis when arguing against the
German Hypothesis), becomes an important method for identifying
the Hungarian queen mentioned by William of Malmesbury.
Unfortunately, this point is poorly covered in the papers
supporting the Russian Hypothesis, which don't even attempt to
list the Hungarian queens during the relevant period, let alone
try to rule out the ones other than Anastasia. The problem of
other candidates was pointed out by Parsons, who gives a list of
the possible queens of Hungary during the period, taken from
standard secondary sources [Parsons (2002), 46]. Mladjov briefly
considered the two wives (or supposed wives) of Peter Orseolo
(king of Hungary, 1038-41, 1044-6) who were mentioned by Parsons,
and rejected them as possible sisters of Agatha for
"political considerations", stating that "it is
virtually impossible that Agatha would have been the
sister-in-law of the very monarch her host András I toppled in
1046." [Mladjov (2003), 21, 42-3, 71-2]. While it would
undoubtedly be a negative factor, the claim that it is
"virtually impossible" is surely an overstatement.
Indeed, the slimness of the surviving information makes it
difficult, if not impossible, to come up with a complete list of
candidates. The queens of Hungary (or wives of kings) during the
period are discussed in Appendix 5. It can be seen that there
were other queens of Hungary besides Anastasia during the period,
some of whom might not even be documented in the records. In
fact, one of the other hypotheses which has been proposed (the
Polish Hypothesis discussed below) suggests that Agatha was a
sister of a different Hungarian queen. Thus, even though the
Polish Hypothesis seems less likely than the Russian Hypothesis
it is difficult to insist that William of Malmesbury's sister of
a queen of Hungary (assuming the information to be accurate)
necessarily refers to a daughter of Iaroslav I.

The testimony of Geoffrey Gaimar has been used
by the proponents of the Russian Hypothesis in a very
questionable way. As noted above, Geoffrey Gaimar is not a
reliable source. Much is based on the identification of
Geoffrey's Gardimbre, a conjecture apparently based
mainly on the coincidence of the first four letters of a nine
letter name, which is then used to suggest that Geoffrey's
Hungarian king was really the Russian king. In fact, it is simply
not appropriate to take an already unreliable source and to emend
its statements in some significant way for the purpose of using
that altered statement as "evidence" in support of some
position, as has been done in this case.

One of the well documented daughters of
Iaroslav I is Anna, wife of Henri I, king of France ["...
uxorem duxit nomine Annam, filiam Georgii Sclavi regis Rutiorum
..." Ex Chronici Veteris excerpto, s.a. 1047,
RHF 11: 159; "Qui post Mahildis reginć humationem,
accepit aliam conjugem, videlicet filiam Jurischloht regis
Russorum, nomine Annam" Ex Historić Franc.
Fragmento, RHF 11: 161; "... ad quemdam regem in
finibus Grćcić qui vocabatur Gerisclo, de terra Ruscić, ut
daret sibi filiam suam in uxorem" Ex Chron. S.
Petri Vivi Senon., RHF 11: 197; "Hic ex Anna filia
regis Russić, nomine Buflesdoc" Ex Abbrev. Gest.
Franciae Regum, RHF 11: 213; etc.]. John Carmi Parsons has
pointed out that if Agatha were a daughter of Iaroslav I of Kiev,
then her children, including Margaret, would have been first
cousins of king Philippe I of France, and Margaret's
daughter-in-law Eadgyth/Matilda, wife of Henry I of England,
would have been first cousin once-removed of Philippe and second
cousin to Philippe's son Louis VI [Parsons (2002), 43]. Given the
close relation between England, Scotland, and France during that
time, one would except to see such relationships mentioned in the
chronicles if they were in fact true. Yet there is no trace of
such relationships in the known sources. While such an argument
from silence is not conclusive, it is a strike against the
Russian Hypothesis.

Norman Ingham pointed out that an eleventh
century fresco "appears to have represented Grand Prince
Iaroslav Mudryi" and his wife, he being flanked by
as many as five sons and she by five daughters [Ingham (1998b),
231; for pictures, see Ingham (1998a), 216, 222]. If this is an
accurate family portrait, it would prove that Iaroslav had more
than the three daughters who are known by western sources [most
notably Adam of Bremen: "Haroldus a Graecia regressus,
filiam regis Ruziae Gerzlef uxorem accepit. Alteram tulit
Andreas, rex Ungrorum, de qua genitus est Salomon. Terciam duxit
rex Francorum Heinricus, quae peperit ei Philippus."
Adam of Bremen, iii, 11, Scholia 63, MGH SS 7: 339]. Ingham
admits that the number of sons is not right [Ingham (1998b),
231-2], and suggested that "(s)ymmetry no doubt required
five sons to balance five daughters in the composition."
[ibid., 232 n. 3] However, as noted by Parsons, if the number of
sons is not right, then the number of daughters need not be right
[Parsons (2002), 41-2]. Also, since the daughters are not
identified anyway, there is no evidence from the fresco that one
of them was Agatha, even if we allowed the existence of more
daughters (which is likely enough).

Onomastics has played a major role in some of
the articles arguing in favor of the Russian Hypothesis [Ingham
(1998a); Pavsic (2000, 2001)]. The connection of onomastics to
the problem of Agatha's origin is discussed in detail in Appendix
1. Since neither the name of Agatha nor the names of any of her
children have been shown to have appeared previously in the
families of Iaroslav or his wife, the onomastic argument in favor
of the Russian Hypothesis is weak, and has been overplayed,
especially by Pavsic. However, Ingham did point out that the
names Agatha, Margaret, and Christina all appeared in one of the
oldest sources for the availability of saints' names in Russia
[Ingham (1998a), 220]. Thus, even though the onomastic evidence
is not strong, the Russian Hypothesis does fare a bit better in
this regard than its chief competitor, the German Hypothesis.
There is an interesting, if questionable, conjecture which would,
if true, improve the onomastic evidence for the Russian
Hypothesis. In a genealogical table published in 2000, Donald C.
Jackman makes Iaroslav I of Kiev a son of Vladimir I by his wife
Anna of Byzantium, without offering a source [Jackman (2000),
47]. Although this contradicts the primary evidence, which states
that Iaroslav was a son of Vladimir by his wife Rogned, William
Humphreys in 2004 suggested that Iaroslav might have been a son
of Anna [Humphreys (2004), 284-5; Jackman's table is noted]. In
2008, Jackman gave a detailed argument why Iaroslav might have
been a son of Anna [Jackman (2008), 66-75]. The point of
onomastic interest is that Anna had an aunt named Agatha.
However, the point is very speculative.

In his criticism of the Russian Hypothesis,
John Carmi Parsons questions whether Iaroslav would have seen
Eadweard ("a landless wanderer") as a viable son-in-law
[Parsons (2002), 42]. He points out that in the mid-1040's there
was no reason to expect that king Eadweard the Confessor would
not have a son. This objection is difficult to judge, because we
really know very little about Eadweard's life as an exile, and we
don't know the extent to which he was in regular contact with
friends in England (if at all). The fact is that there was
apparently only one life separating Eadweard the Exile from the
English throne, and he would seem to be a fairly attractive
candidate for a son-in-law. Thus, it is difficult to accept this
as a valid negative argument against the Russian Hypothesis.

As with the German Hypothesis, objections
regarding consanguineous marriages have been made against the
Russian Hypothesis, but these do not appear to pose any serious
problems. One of these objections can be quickly dismissed. Faris
and Richardson pointed out that according to information given by
Ronay, Eadweard the Exile was a first cousin to the children of
Iaroslav and his wife Ingegerd of Sweden [Faris-Richardson
(1998), 234]. However, as Faris and Richardson acknowledge, Ronay
offers no documentation for his claim that Ingegerd was a
half-sister of Eadweard's mother Ealdgyth [Ronay (1984), 45;
Ronay (1989), 53 & n. 2 (p. 193)]. Indeed, there is no good
reason to accept Ronay's improbable statement [see the page of Ealdgyth]. Of more consequence is a possible consanguinity noted
by Andrew Mac Ewen [Faris-Richardson (1998), 234 & n. 28].
Agatha's great-grandson, Henry of Scotland, earl of
Northumberland (son of David I, son of Margaret, daughter of
Agatha), was married to Iaroslav's great-great-granddaughter Ada
de Warenne (daughter of Isabel de Vermandois, daughter of Hugues
le Grand, count of Vermandois, son of Anna of Kiev, daughter of
Iaroslav). Thus, if Agatha were a daughter of Iaroslav, Henry and
Ada would be third cousins (degree 4:4), technically within the
forbidden degree. However, such marriages happened often enough
that this should not be regarded as a serious objection to the
Russian Hypothesis. An example involving fourth cousins once
removed (degree 5:6) given by Mladjov would be of no consequence
[Mladjov (2003), 66].

The Russian Hypothesis has also been on the
receiving end of some unfair criticism. Faris and Richardson
write: "The reader, having been informed by Jetté that a
previously unknown daughter of Jaroslav has been identified,
might expect some explanation why this discovery has been so long
delayed, and why she has not shown up in previous work on the
princes of Kiev." [Faris-Richardson (1998), 226-7]. For such
a statement to be regarded as a reasonable point, it would first
be necessary to show that the existing sources are sufficiently
comprehensive that it is unlikely that any daughter has been
missed by the surviving sources. This is clearly not the case for
the daughters of Iaroslav. In fact, the three previously known
daughters of Iaroslav are all absent from Russian sources, and
appear only in various Western sources.

The Russian Hypothesis depends heavily on the
acceptance of the priority of William of Malmesbury as a source
for Agatha's origin, and on a specific identity for a vaguely
identified Hungarian queen. It does have the advantage of
providing a very plausible scenario for the marriage, but on the
whole the case has been overstated by its proponents. Comparing
the Russian Hypothesis with its main competitor, the German
Hypothesis, the direct evidence for the German Hypothesis is
significantly better, because the evidence is earlier and the
process of elimination involved in the German Hypothesis is
relatively straightforward, whereas the search for Hungarian
queens produces and alternate candidate and runs into the problem
of the thinner Eastern European records, where a complete list
cannot be compiled with any confidence. This is mitigated
significantly by the geographical and onomastic evidence, which
tilt the case to some degree back toward the Russian Hypothesis.
While the hypothesis remains somewhat less likely than the German
Hypothesis, in my opinion, it is still significantly more likely
than all of the other hypotheses.

The Bruno Hypothesis

The hypothesis that Agatha was a daughter of
Bruno, bishop of Augsburg from 1007 to 1029, brother of emperor
Heinrich II, has been around since at least 1763, when it was
argued by György Pray [Pray (1763), 1:
27-8]. In 1779, István Katona supported the Bruno Hypothesis, as
did Peter Friedrich Suhm in 1787 [Katona (1779), 1: 260-3; 2:
97-107, not seen by me, cited by Herzog (1939), 1; Suhm (1787),
3: 726]. In 1877, Edward A. Freeman seemed tentatively to reach
the same conclusion [Freeman (1870-9), 2: 376, 671-2]. More
recently, in 1954, R. L. Grćme Ritchie, after rejecting the
Hungarian Hypothesis, concluded that the Bruno Hypothesis was
"perfectly tenable" [Ritchie (1954), 392]. The logic of
the Bruno Hypothesis is essentially the same as for the German
Hypothesis, except starting with a different emperor Heinrich. If
one takes the statement of John of Worcester and others that
Agatha was a daughter of a germanus of an emperor
Heinrich, and then identifies this Heinrich with Heinrich II (d.
1024), one obtains Heinrich's brother bishop Bruno as the obvious
candidate.

The most obvious objection to the "Bruno
Hypothesis" is that Bruno was a bishop, and that in order
for a daughter to be legitimate, she would have had to be born
before 1007. Ritchie's claim that "in his day there was no
canonical reason for celibacy" is totally unconvincing
[Ritchie (1954), 392]. Another very serious problem with the
Bruno Hypothesis is that the genealogical appendix of John of
Worcester explicitly states that Agatha was a daughter of a germanus
of Heinrich III, not Heinrich II. It cannot be directly proven
that Agatha was not an illegitimate daughter of Bruno, but it is
very improbable.

The Hungarian Hypothesis, which makes Agatha a
daughter of king Stephen (István) I of Hungary by his wife
Gisela, sister of the emperor Heinrich II, has been popular with
those who would like to reconcile the contradictory information
of the primary sources. The first notice of this theory of which
I am aware was in 1778, when Daniel Cornides made this
conclusion, called the "Hungarian Hypothesis" [Cornides
(1778), 232-9; reference courtesy of Todd Farmerie]. In 1879,
Harry Breßlau argued for the Hungarian Hypothesis in his Jahrbücher
for the emperor Konrad II [Breßlau (1879-84), 1: 102 n. 1]. The
hypothesis was also supported in 1938 by Sándor Fest [Fest
(1938)] and in 1952 by G. Andrews Moriarty [Moriarty (1952), 60].

If one wants to reconcile the statements that
Agatha was a daughter of the king of Hungary with the statements
that she was a relative of an emperor Heinrich, then two kings of
Hungary stand out: Stephen I, who married Gisela, sister of
Heinrich II, and Salomon, who married Judith, daughter of
Heinrich III and sister of Heinrich IV [see Appendix 5]. A quick
look at chronology quickly eliminates Salomon as a possible
father for Agatha, so that Stephen and Gisela stand out.

The statement of John of Worcester that Agatha
was "filiam germani imperatoris Heinrici" is
dealt with in two different ways. Breßlau suggested that germanus
("brother") should be emended to germana
("sister"), which, since Heinrich II had only one known
sister, would mean Gisela, apparently fitting perfectly with the
statement of Geoffrey Gaimar that Agatha was a daughter of the
king of Hungary. Fest arrived at the same conclusion by claiming
that germanus could mean "brother-in-law"
[Fest (1938), 125]. Thus, the Hungarian Hypothesis would seem to
reconcile all but one of the main twelfth century sources on
Agatha's origin. However, it does this by using an extended
meaning of germanus (or an emendation) and by ignoring
the testimony of William of Malmesbury.

A number of objections have been raised against
the Hungarian Hypothesis, mostly by Vajay and Ritchie:

The sources which indicate that Agatha was
a daughter of a king of Hungary are all probelmatic.

It is said that Stephen had no surviving
children. A surviving daughter of Stephen would be an
heir to the Hungarian throne, yet the continental sources
say nothing of such a daughter.

According to Vajay, a daughter of Stephen
would make a chronologically unlikely wife for Eadweard.

The hypothesis involves either an
emendation or an abuse of the word germanus, and
the genealogical appendix of John of Worcester specifies
Heinrich III, and not Heinrich II, as the emperor to whom
Agatha was related.

Stephen I was canonized in 1083, and it is
unlikely that his name would have gone unmentioned if he
were in fact the father.

As noted above, all of the main twelfth century
sources which either state or indicate that Agatha was a daughter
of the king of Hungary have significant problems. Geoffrey Gaimar
is not a reliable source, Orderic Vitalis makes the
chronologically impossible statement that Salomon was Agatha's
father, Ailred of Rievaulx, after indicating that St. Margaret
had royal Hungarian ancestry, goes on to distinguish Agatha from
the daughter of the Hungarian king, who is said by Ailred to have
married Eadweard's brother. Thus, there is no reason to believe
in the reliability of the statements that Agatha was a daughter
of a king of Hungary.

The Annales Altahenses Maiores state
that Stephen had no surviving sons ["Stephanus bonae
memoriae rex, ..., cum filius eius patre superstite esset
mortuus, quoniam alium non habuit filium, ..." Annales
Altahenses Maiores, s.a. 1041, MGH SS 20: 794]. Some later
Hungarian chronicles indicate that Stephen had no surviving
children [e.g., "Nam maxime eapropter, ut de suo
sanguine dignus nullus esset regni corona sublimari, ..."
Simon of Kéza, , Gesta Hungarorum, ii, 24, Chron.
Hung., 78; Vajay (1962), 75 n. 3]. It is difficult to accept
these statements as completely ruling out daughters. However,
Stephen is unlikely to have had any surviving daughters who were
politically significant. Any son-in-law of Stephen would have
been a potential heir to the Hungarian throne, and the silence of
the sources would therefore be difficult to explain unless any
such son-in-law remained in the political background for some
reason. Even unmarried, a surviving daughter who had not entered
religion would have been likely to become a valuable matrimonial
pawn in the power struggle that emerged after Stephen's death.

It has also been suggested that any daughter of
Stephen would be too old to be the wife of Eadweard or the mother
of Eadgar the Ćtheling [Vajay (1962), 71-2]. In fact, the
evidence for this is unclear. Vajay states that Stephen became
engaged to his wife Gisela in 996 and that all of their children
were born between 1001 and 1010, but he cites only secondary
sources in Hungarian for these statements [Vajay (1962), 71, 75
n. 2, 9]. In fact, these dates are far from clear. Two German
chronicles place the marriage of Stephen and Gisela in 1009 [MGH
SS 9: 567, 574]. The birthdate of Gisela is not clear, but her
brother Heinrich II was born on 6 May 973 [Hirsch (1862-75), 1:
88], and Gisela could very well have been born in the 980's.
Thus, even though it is likely that Stephen's children were older
than Eadweard, we cannot rule out the possibility that he had a
daughter who was younger than Eadweard. Thus, the chronological
objection may not be valid.

Breßlau suggests emending the word germana
to germanus. Fest suggests that the word germanus
may also mean brother-in-law, a definition which is outside its
normal meaning (see Appendix 3). The latter interpretation is
especially unlikely in this case, because "daughter of a
brother-in-law" is an especially awkward way of describing a
niece, and it is very doubtful that a chronicler would use a
desription like this. Furthermore, the Hungarian Hypothesis
requires that the emperor being mentioned is Heinrich II, whereas
the genealogical appendix of John of Worcester shows that it was
Heinrich III who was intended. Thus, it is very difficult to
argue that the evidence of John of Worcester favors the Hungarian
Hypothesis.

As Ritchie noted, king Stephen I of Hungary was
canonized in 1083 [Ritchie (1954), 390]. Agatha's daughter
Margaret of Scotland died ten years later, in 1093. If she had
been the granddaughter of a saint, then that fact would have been
well known, and it is extremely improbable that her biographer
Turgot would have failed to mention it. Also, the sources which
call Agatha a daughter of an unidentified king of Hungary would
probably have given Stephen's name if that famous king were her
father.

Thus, although the chronological objection is
not that convincing, the other objections carry significant
weight. Although it has not been ruled out quite so conclusively
as some would claim, the Hungarian Hypothesis is still a very
improbable solution to the question of Agatha's origins.

It should be noticed that the Hungarian
Hypothesis has some further variations. The variation in which
Eadweard marries the daughter of a different Hungarian king is
discussed in the next section. Another, in which the groom is
Eadweard's brother Eadmund, is discussed in Appendix 2. A third
variant, in which Agatha marries a step-daughter of king Aba
Samuel of Hungary, is part of the Bulgarian Hypothesis, and is
discussed under that heading.

A variation of the Hungarian Hypothesis

There are some variations of the Hungarian
Hypothesis which have not been proposed by any author to my
knowledge, but should at least be briefly discussed. Geoffrey
Gaimar states that the wife of "Eadgar" (the name that
he uses for Eadweard the Exile) was a daughter of an unidentified
Hungarian king. Ailred, in one of his conflicting accounts,
states that St. Margaret was descended on her mother's side from
the blood of Hungarian kings, but does not specify a line of
descent. Thus, we should also try to rule out the possibility
that Agatha was the daughter of some Hungarian king other than
Stephen.

Jetté rules out this possibility by stating
that "a brother-in-law or son-in-law of Peter Orseolo or of
Aba Samuel would not have been given lodging by their rival and
successor Andrew I." [Jetté (1996), 421] But is that true?
Trying to determine political motivation from such scanty
evidence is risky business. Stephen I, who, having no surviving
sons, favored his sister's son Peter Orseolo as his successor,
blinded one of his brother's sons and sent the children of the
latter into exile [Annales Altahenses Maiores, s.a.
1041, MGH SS 20: 794]. If the blinded prince was Andrew's father,
as seems highly probable, then it is very understandable that
Andrew might not want to have any contact with relatives of the
pro-German Peter Orseolo. Nevertheless, the old saying
"politics makes strange bedfellows" is relevant here.
Even though the argument makes a connection less likely, it does
not rule it out. Furthermore, there seems to be no reason to
believe that Andrew had anything personal against his predecessor
Aba Samuel.

Nevertheless, even though Agatha's filiation as
a daughter of some other Hungarian king cannot be definitively
ruled out, there does not seem to be any good reason to support
such a revised Hungarian scenario.

The Cristinus Hypothesis

In his 2002 paper on Agatha, John Carmi
Parsons, after discussing the German Hypothesis and the Russian
Hypothesis, concluded that the matter was not proven either way
[Parsons (2002), 51]. He then followed up by offering "two
more theories to indicate just how far we are from the last word
on the question." [ibid., 52] First, he asked whether
Eadweard the Exile married twice. This possibility, which was not
discussed in any detail, would help to explain the different
accounts we have of Agatha's parentage, but there is no evidence
that Eadweard was married more than once. Still, the question
does serve its stated purpose of emphasizing the lack of any
definitive solution.

The second theory offered the possibility that
Agatha was a daughter of a certain count Cristinus by his wife
Oda, daughter of count Bernard of Haldensleben by a daughter of
Vladimir I of Kiev. Parsons noted that this descent would give
Agatha the Russian royal ancestry suggested by the late
interpolation to the Laws of Edward the Confessor, and
that the name of Cristinus would explain the name of Agatha's
daughter Christina. Also, it is suggested that this would make
Agatha a descendant in the sixth generation of emperor Otto I,
thus explaining the reference to Agatha as an emperor's
kinswoman.

In my opinion, this theory has little to
recemmend it. The supposed Russian link, going back only to a
great-grandparent, is rather distant, and the onomastic link is
tenuous. The supposed descent from Otto I is based in part on
links which are themselves very controversial, and even if true,
it is unlikely that someone whose only relationship to the
emperor was six generations back would be considered a kinswoman
of the emperor.

The Bulgarian Hypothesis

The "Bulgarian Hypothesis", due to
Ian Mladjov, first appeared in an article published in 2003
[Mladjov (2003)]. Mladjov proposed that Agatha was a daughter of
Gavril Radomir (d. 1015), emperor of Bulgaria, a maternal
granddaughter of king Géza I of Hungary (d. 997), and a
stepdaughter of Aba Samuel (d. 1044), another king of Hungary.
This scenario would also give Agatha a paternal grandmother of
the same name.

Mladjov's main primary source is a passage in a
twelfth century recesion of the Compendium Historiarum
of Ioannes Skylitzes by bishop Mikhael
of Devol. (Here, I am handicapped by the poor publishing
standards mentioned above, in which apparently accented
characters are replaced by spaces in the published version of
Mladjov's article. I have replaced these spaces with what I think
might be the correct characters, in unaccented italics. This
affects only proper names, and any errors in the italicized
characters are my own.) The English translation (by Mladjov?) of
the passage reads:

"His son Gavril, who was also called
Radomir, succeeded to the rule of the Bulgarians. He excelled
his father in prowess and strength but lagged far behind him
in wisdom and intelligence. He was the son of Samuil by Agatha,
the daughter of Ioannes Khrysalios,
the governor of Durazzo. He began reigning on the 15th of
October, in the 13th Indiction. But he did not complete even
one year and was killed, when he was going hunting, by
Aaron's son Ivan, also called Vladislav, whom he had saved
from death when he had been about to perish. Radomir, who was
married to the daughter of the king of Hungary, began
loathing her for reasons unknown to me and sent her away,
when she was pregnant by him. And he married Eirene,
a beautiful captive from Larissa." [Mladjov (2003), 50,
citing Skylitzes, with the passage quoted in the
original language (which I do not recognize, but might be
Greek transliterated into Latin characters)]

Mladjov's proposal is that Agatha was the child
with whom Gavril Radomir's Hungarian wife was pregnant when he
sent her away [Mladjov (2003), 55-6]. The time that the bride was
sent away is unclear, except that it was before the death of
Gavril Radomir's father Samuil, emperor of Bulgaria, who died in
1014, according to another passage in Mikhael's
recension of Skulitzes [Mladjov (2003), 53-4]. Mladjov
places this at about the latest possible date, concluding that
Gavril Radomir divorced his Hungarian wife and married Eirene
in early 1014 [ibid., 54]. Mladjov suggests, reasonably, that the
rejected wife would have returned to her Hungarian homeland to
have her child. Chronology indicates that this wife's father was
probably Géza I (d. 997) and that she was a sister of István
(Stephen) I. Mladjov suggests that this princess was then married
to Aba Samuel, the later king of Hungary who is called a sororius
of Stephen in a thirteenth century Hungarian source, and is
therefore believed to have married a sister of Stephen. Thus, if
all of this conjecture is true, Agatha would have been a
step-daughter of Aba Samuel, fitting reasonably well with those
statements which make her a daughter of a Hungarian king. If this
is all accepted, then onomastics would be the icing on the cake,
for as has been noted, Gavril Radomir's mother was named Agatha.
Mladjov even claims that the theory agrees with the statements in
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that Agatha was a relative of
the emperor.

This last claim can be quickly and thoroughly
dismissed. The closest connection between a child of Gavril
Radomir's Hungarian wife and an emperor would be that the child's
(probable) maternal uncle was married to a sister of the emperor.
This is clearly not a blood relationship and it is clear that at
this point the author was trying to stretch his arguments too
far. Even though the Bulgarian Hypothesis is attractive in some
ways, there are two serious problems beyond the lack of direct
evidence which keep it from being a serious contender. One
problem is the identification of Gavril Radomir's rejected wife
as the wife of Aba Samuel. This is nothing but conjecture, and
the hypothesis is seriously weakened if the identification is not
correct.

The other difficulty is the very serious
problem of chronology. Gavril Radomir is said to have had at
least five children by his second wife Eirene,
whom he married after the rejection of his Hungarian wife
[Mladjov (2003), 53, 76]. Since Gavril Radomir died in 1015, his
youngest child would be born no later than 1016, and probably
earlier. Thus, the last child born to Gavril Radomir's Hungarian
wife is likely to have been born earlier than 1005, which would
be an improbably early birthdate for Agatha. True, it is
possible, as Mladjov notes, to conjecture a date of birth for
this child as late as 1014 by various arguments, for example,
Mladjov's suggestion that Gavril Radomir's second wife was a
longtime mistress by whom he already had several children when he
married her [Mladjov (2003), 54]. However, this involves further
guesswork, and all that Mladjov succeeds in proving is that the
Bulgarian Hypothesis is not impossible. In my opinion, it is far
from likely.

The Byzantine Hypothesis

In 2004, William Humphreys proposed as an
alternate hypothesis the possibility that Agatha was a sister of
Anastasia, wife of Iaroslav's son Vsevelod (d. 1093), and
apparently daughter of the Byzantine emperor Constantine IX
"Monomachos" [Humphreys (2004), 280]. This is the
"Byzantine Hypothesis".

The logic of this hypothesis is not very
clearly stated, partly because the author tends to dance around
the main points by asking questions rather than just making
direct statements. Nevertheless, the two main points put forward,
neither of them at all convincing, are the following:

It is suggested that William of
Malmesbury's reference to Agatha as a sister of the queen
might have been referring to the queen of Russia rather
than the queen of Hungary.

It is suggested that references to the
emperor in sources such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
and John of Worcester might have been to the Byzantine
Emperor rather than the Holy Roman Emperor.

Humphreys indicates that when William of
Malmesbury refers to the princes taking refuge with the king of
the "Huns", this was probably in Russia and not
Hungary. While it is true that the princes were probably in exile
in Russia before they were in Hungary, it would still be a
significant emendation of William's account to suggest that he
was calling Agatha a sister of the Russian queen.

With regard to the statement of John of
Worcester that Agatha was "filia germani imperatoris
Heinrici" Humphreys points out that one of the meanings
of germanus is "true" when used as an
adjective, suggesting that the "true" emperor referred
to the Byzantine emperor. This suggestion has no reasonable basis
whatsoever. Not only does Humphreys fail to offer any evidence
that the word germanus was ever used in that way to
describe a Byzantine emperor, but the presence of the name Henricus
clearly shows that it was not intended to be interpreted that way
in this case. Humphreys also suggests that Ailred's above use of
the term "Imperator Romanus" might refer to an
emperor named Romanus (such as the Byzantine emperor Romanus III,
d. 1034) rather than the "Roman Emperor". While that
would be a grammatically allowable interpretation of that
particular sentence taken in isolation, other statements of
Ailred rule this out, showing clearly that he was referring to an
emperor named Heinrich.

In fact, even the author stated that he
considered this scenario to be less likely than the Russian
Hypothesis [Humphreys (2004), 287]. The Byzantine Hypothesis
should be firmly rejected.

The Polish Hypothesis

The most recent new theory on the origin of
Agatha is the "Polish Hypothesis". Proposed by John P.
Ravilious in 2009, the Polish Hypothesis conjectures Agatha to be
a daughter of duke Mieszko II of Poland [Ravilious (2009)]. Since
Mieszko's wife Richenza was a maternal granddaughter of emperor
Otto II by his Byzantine wife Theophano, the Polish Hypothesis
would, if true, lead to some interesting ancestry for Agatha.

The author starts by pointing out that king
Cnut of England and Denmark was related to the Polish royal
family through his mother, a daughter of Mieszko I of Poland and
sister of Boleslaw I, and thus had close relations with Poland
[Ravilious (2009), 71-2]. This connection is well documented by a
statement of Thietmar of Merseburg [Thietmar, Chron.,
vii, 28, MGH SS 3: 848-9]. Ravilious then revives an argument of
Johannes Steenstrup that the rex Suanorum/Suuanorum of
John of Worcester and the rex Swevorum of William of
Malmesbury is not the king of Sweden, but the king of the Slavs
[Steenstrup (1876-82); Ravilious (2009), 72-4]. Thus, he argues,
Cnut sent the two princes to a Slavic land, and the obvious
choice would be Poland, with which Cnut had close relations. The
author then points out that until 1031, Boleslaw I and his son
Mieszko II of Poland held Ruthenia ("Red Russia") and
thus was "effectively the 'king of Red Russia'."
[Ravilious (2009), 74-5] This leads to the key identification of
the Malesclodus of the Laws of Edward the Confessor
as being not Iaroslav, but Mieszko II of Poland [ibid., 75]. With
Agatha conjectured as a daughter of Mieszko II, William of
Malmesbury is then called in to support the case, for a daughter
of Mieszko II was married to king Béla I of Hungary, and thus in
this scenario Agatha would also be a sister of a Hungarian queen.
The fact that a daughter of Mieszko II and his queen Richenza
would also be a descendant of emperor Otto II is then called into
play to explain the references to Agatha as a relative of the
emperor.

The Polish Hypothesis is similar to the Russian
Hypothesis in that both make important use of the Laws of
Edward the Confessor and both invoke the support of William
of Malmesbury by making Agatha sister of a queen of Hungary.
However, the Polish Hypothesis inherits most of the disadvantages
of the Russian Hypothesis, while gaining few of the advantages in
return. Relying heavily on the testimony of William of
Malmesbury, it is subject to the same process of elimination in
trying to eliminate other Hungarian queens as possibilities.
Furthermore, the attempt to reinterpret the sources by reading
"king of Poland" for rex Suanorum/Swevorum or rex
Rugorum is unconvincing. This is especially the case with
king Malesclodus. The name may look closer to
"Mieszko" than to "Iaroslav" at first glance,
but the name Iaroslav is known to have had some strange
corruptions, and the title rex Rugorum argues strongly
against the identification with Mieszko [see Appendix 6 for a
discussion of the identity of Malesclodus]. Mieszko
holding some Russian territory for a few years would not change
this. Also, making Agatha a great-granddaughter of emperor Otto
II does not readily explain why she was called a relative of an
emperor Heinrich. As shown by Ravilious, the correctness of the
Polish Hypothesis would make her a third cousin once-removed of
Heinrich III, but it is unlikely that a relationship that distant
would be mentioned in the sources. (Her relationship to Heinrich
II would be one generation closer, but he was not emperor at the
time Agatha married.) In addition, the statement of John of
Worcester calling her the daughter of a germanus of
Heinrich would have to be drastically emended in order to fit
with the Polish Hypothesis, first by changing the gender of germanus
to germana (because germanus would have to
refer to Agatha's father), and second by seriously revising the
meaning of the word germana (see Appendix 3).

Still, the Polish Hypothesis remains possible.
The cases for the German and Russian Hypotheses are significantly
better, but the Polish Hypothesis seems more likely than the
remaining hypotheses.

Wunder's variation of the German
Hypothesis

In 1975, Gerd Wunder proposed a variation of
the German Hypothesis in which Agatha had a previous marriage:

As we have seen, one difficulty of the German
Hypothesis is that it seems hard to explain the circumstances
under which the niece of the emperor Heinrich III would be sent
to Hungary or Russia to marry an exiled Anglo-Saxon prince. Gerd
Wunder, who supported the hypothesis that Agatha was a daughter
of Liudolf, conjectured that she was originally sent east as a
wife for Vladimir of Novgorod, eldest son of Iaroslav I, and that
she married Eadweard only after the death of Vladimir [Wunder
(1975), 84-5]. Wunder's conjecture was later supported by Faris
and Richardson [Faris-Richardson (1998), 233-4]. However, both
Wunder and Faris-Richardson acknowledged that this conjecture is
very speculative. Faris and Richardson also hinted that the name
of Agatha could have been given to her at marriage as an Eastern
Orthodox name, which, if true, would eliminate the onomastic
objection to the German Hypothesis [ibid., 232; see Appendix 1].
In addition to the complete lack of supporting evidence, this
theory would not leave much chronological room for the children
of Eadweard and Agatha. Although it cannot be strictly ruled out
on that basis, the theory seems very improbable. It should be
noted here that Wunder's variation is not a necessary feature of
the German Hypothesis, and that the improbability of Wunder's
scenario should not be used to argue against the German
Hypothesis itself, as Mladjov does [Mladjov (2003), 38].

Nature abhors a vacuum. In genealogy, one of
the corollaries of this seems to be that genealogists are
reluctant to regard a parentage as unknown, and would rather pick
from among the choices when several alternatives have been
proposed. However, this is not always advisable. In my opinion,
it seems that we are forced to conclude that, given the current
state of knowledge, it is not possible to assign a specific
parentage to Agatha which carries conviction. The German
Hypothesis and the Russian Hypothesis are are each possibilities,
but each also has significant problems. The other hypotheses are
all even less likely, and "none of the above" seems
like an attractive alternate hypothesis. Pending further
discoveries, Agatha's parentage remains unknown. It may not be a
popular conclusion, but it appears to be the right one based on
the available evidence.